DVD Reviews

The good news is that the second collaboration between director Scott Stewart and actor Paul Bettany is a marked improvement on the pseudo-religious muck that was Legion The bad news is that fact doesn’t make Priest any more...

The objective voice when it comes to religion and morality in film is often the weakest heard.  By casting Christians and Pagans in shrouded light of grayish ambiguity, Christopher Smith’s Black Death, a European-made ...

If the hand-drawn frames aren’t enough to garner your interest in Jacques Tati’s beautiful semi-autobiographical narrative, the simplicity of this father-and-daughter story will certainly win you over.  That is, if you have a ...

They call it the savage journey into the heart of the American Dream.  Some call it America’s Season in Hell.  For Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the true Lost Weekend of writers, scoundrels, gypsies...

Considering the backhanded critical response On Stranger Tides is getting, file this review under Pirates of the Caribbean: In Defense of the Sublime.  Rob Marshall, veteran director of the musicals Chicago and Nine, takes over the ...

The high school coming of age narrative is never out of fashion – especially when it is done correctly.  Noodling from the likes of Juno, Heathers, and Donnie Darko, Michael Goldbach’s Daydream Nation (a title borrowed from Sonic Youth’s...

Owing a huge debt to the beauty of Genndy Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack, Jennifer Yuh's Kung Fu Panda 2 exploits what worked best about the 2008 original but wraps itself in a less satisfying narrative this time around. Most of the pathos of the film ...

Come gather round, children, it is cinematic confession time.  I love me some old-school kung-fu films.  I love them for being so riddled with clichés and candy coated cornball enthusiasm and extreme violence and general goofiness.  Films like ...

Another mash-up in a long list of pop culture suicides; this is the largely inane territory of D.J Caruso’s I Am Number Four, a film that presents itself as X-Men meets Twilight by way of Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a little “Dog the Bounty Hunter” thrown in...

The Wolf Pack is indeed back.  Unfortunately, the originality of their first foray into super drunken and super funny territory does not return along with them. In what goes down as a note-for-note retread of 2009’s The Hangover, director Todd Phillips ...

The nostalgic themes and past perfect philosophy running through Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris are certainly familiar to his loyal devotees, but never before have they been presented so perfectly and so pleasantly. This is the non-abrasive Allen. Less intellectually ...

Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass) has done it again.  In what goes down as an epic battle between differing philosophies and alternate histories, Vaughn has delivered the perfect comic book movie (let me stress that: the perfect COMIC BOOK movie) ...

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a beautiful film, but it isn't a good film. While the relevance of this comment within the context of what makes a film “good” can certainly be debated, its clarity becomes...

In 1970 the western genre received a much needed injection of honest viciousness in storytelling courtesy of director Elliot Silverstein and writer Jack De Witt.  Their adaptation of a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson was something a bit revelatory for its ...

Super 8 is sci-fi fantasy fulfillment at its most complete.  Like the finest of wine-accompanying meals, J.J. Abrams’ sleek homage to the feel and look of the classic films directed and/or produced Steven Spielberg (the ones from my youth) is...

There has always been something special about Ridley Scott’s Legend.  Too bad it never gets the recognition it deserves.  Maybe, with a new coat of HD paint and a look into the Director’s Cut of the film...

It used to be, as age progressed, as one generation passed onto the next, that certain things— book, film, sport, whatever—lost their lustre. What was an eagerly awaited activity became old hat or not appropriately engaging anymore ...

The first I heard of this film was that it was gonna star that TV heartthrob from ER (that I had never seen), who had also been chosen to be the new Batman. I was not yet familiar with Robert Rodriguez and and was only just aware of...

Richard Ayoade, probably best known for his role in Britain’s The IT Crowd, accepts as his first directorial challenge, the adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s quirky, coming-of-age novel called Submarine. A daunting challenge for ...

It’s hard to believe, but this 1984 smash started out life a gritty, straight down the line, action vehicle that ended up in the hands of one Sylvester Stallone. The muscular one had a crack at rewriting it, handed it in, and caused the studio to say ...

George Lucas’s ode to the social phenomenon of cruisin’ is a remarkably candid affair. Often a victim of adlib and off-the-cuff antics and guffaws from its teenage cast, American Graffiti has a unique soul all of its own – even if it doesn’t always land its zingers ...

A movie about making movies always has a sort of bizarre allure to it and Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man, first appearing in 1980, is not a stranger to either quality.  Praised and, in fact, buoyed by print critics back in the day, the film didn’t entirely ...

This is not the Green Lantern movie its fans have waited to see.  Positioned in what is deemed as the “safe zone” between the surprisingly stellar X-Men: First Class and the anticipated release of Captain America, the movie – directed by Martin Campbell...

Based on the novel by Richard Jessup, Norman Jewison’s The Cincinnati Kid is as razor-sharp as the four corners on a deck of cards. Rhythmic and dynamically succinct, Jewison allows the film to breathe in the natural essence of its native soil...

If anything can be said about Quentin Dupieux’s film, know that Rubber will have you identifying with a car tire and never tiring of the puns that tread in the wake of such a statement.  It’s a film where – clocking in at a crisp 85 minutes - your tolerance for ...

Pixar’s revved-up sequel of their 2006 hit film, Cars, is indeed a triumphant overhaul of a film that usually gets dismissed as the least favorite of their titles.  It’s a shiny endeavor that results in the rarest of achievements in that it is actually much better ...

There’s an underdog sense of determination that hounds this low-budget production about the true life adventures of Danny Greene.   Writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh's mobster movie might telegraph a bit more than it should but it is an admirable attempt...

While it isn’t the most perfect of comedies to come along in a great while, Bad Teacher is perfect in its gut-busting politically incorrect antics as one teacher robs, cheats, and swindles her way into a new set of boobalicious implants Straightforward and ...

In the over caffeinated mega-male screaming-is-acting homophobic cinema of Michael Bay, really loud explosions occur just as often as farts do and leave a lingering odor no bottle of expensive cologne can ...

Fresh from surviving The Expendables with Sylvester Stallone and his assembled wrecking crew, Dolph Lundgren quickly returns to the action genre only to direct himself in a revenge-styled flick that’s a nasty little ...